Since the late nineteenth century, natural history museums have been exhibiting environments in dioramas and biological groups and staging them as “scenes of life.” But natural history collections can also be descried as environments, in particular as lifeworlds for a wide range of life forms. From the outset, some of them, like moths and bugs, have posed a practical problem for furs, feathers, skins, and plants, which museums are supposed to protect and preserve. This applies in particular to historical collection objects – many of which were collected during the colonial period – and affects not just natural history but also ethnological collections and art museums that also work with organic material.
Thus, natural history collections are by no means simply places to store and preserve dead material but also living environments. I am interested in these environments as spaces of social interaction and intervention between human and non-human actors. In particular, I am interested in the question of the knowledge, practices, and politics associated with maintaining collections and with researching and combating so-called “pests.” When and where have natural history collections been described as sites of infestation? How has this disrupted systems of order? What does this bring to light? It depends not least on the issue of what is considered worth preserving, what is removed, and who makes such decisions. What social categories and moral economies, what politics and attitudes are these decisions based on?
Although I would like to concentrate on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in my research, these questions do not just apply to the past but are also incredibly topical. This is because many earlier technologies of preservation and pest control have had a direct impact on our contemporary and future attitudes towards collections and their objects. How do we approach the legacies of history and of chemical and social contamination that materialize in natural history and other collections? To what extent does polluted material foster or limit the production of knowledge? How do contaminated objects change the way we work in and with historical collections? And in what way does this influence the social relations between humans and between humans and objects?
